Police Brutality and Rape Mentality

This Twitter Tweet I found on Facebook represents two very contested and debated histories in America today. Recently, it is known, that many African American men have been shot by police officers for suspicious actively and while some say the police are justified in their decisions to protect themselves while defending the law, other believe that white police officers use excessive force when dealing with situations that involve African Americans and are allowed to slide through the system. While it should be obvious you cannot determine what a person is going to do based on his skin color some people still believe in the dividing barrier of race and believe that it is a hierarchy. People who believe that some races are superior to other might contest this statement because they believe that some groups of people are all suspicious and up to no good. They would contest the quote by saying that not all groups of people that share the same culture can be trusted and police should act accordingly. The Tweet also includes the American culture’s rape mentality that the way women dress is a plausible excuse for rape. Blaming the way in which women dress for sexual assault is a contested debate that I think all women would agree is absurd and would argue that the way a woman chooses to express herself is not telling of her sexual desires and certainly doesn’t mean she wants to have sex with anything male that will look at her. Someone who believes a girl who wears a short shirt and a low top is begging for sex would contest this by saying if a girl is dressing in a sexy way, she must want to have sex.

One thought on “Police Brutality and Rape Mentality”

This tweet most likely caused quite a but of controversy, especially in the wake of all the despairities going on among police officers today and the Black Lives Matter movement. The way that these issues are depicted in the media is different depending on which source is portraying them. I feel that many people probably had something to say about the comparison of the two problems, associating police brutality to rape because they are both separate things that are horrific but different. I can imagine that many women, especially feminists don’t want anything to be compared to something like rape, just as those who have been beaten by police feel as though it’s not a comparable for of abuse (not sure of the correct term to use). Although this is happening currently, it’s also happened for a long time in the past and both things will continue to be misrepresented in the media depending on who is discussing it.